By My Side
by Canadian Belle
Summary: Jimmy looses his best friend. Oneshot. Warning: Character death and lots of angst. Beta'd by Bugfan4Ever.


**By My Side**

A young man of perhaps eighteen clutched his best friend's lifeless body like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver in an unforgiving ocean. His head was hung low over his friend's, whispering unintelligent words of sorrow as tears slipped down his cheeks. "No," was the first understandable thing he said, his chest heaving with sobs. "Not now. Not _ever_!" He pressed his lips to the top his friend's head, not feeling the coldness under his lips in the platonic gesture. "Come on, don't leave me now."

Some of his closest friends stood almost awkwardly around the pair; a man and two women, all of about the same age as the crying man. One of the young women stood in front off to the side, her blond hair falling into her face as her mouth fell open and her eyes widened in dismay. She was too shocked to say anything; she'd always assumed he would just _be_ there. She couldn't imagine their adventures without him. And now he was broken and dead at their feet.

The other young woman, this one mocha-skinned and dark-haired, had kind eyes that were glazed over with unshed tears. She placed a comforting hand on the sobbing man's shoulder, trying to offer some sort of support even though she knew she could bring him no peace with kind words. He looked up at her, his blue eyes wide with a kind of awe she had not seen in them in a long, _long_ time; incomprehension.

"He can't be dead, Libby!" he whispered, his hands still holding the lifeless heap. "Maybe I can fix him; maybe..." Libby shook her head slowly.

"Jimmy," she said, falling to her knees beside him. "It's over." She seemed almost too calm for the situation; her normal sassiness forgotten. Her words held a finality that he was unready to admit to. Jimmy shook his head, more hot tears spilling over his wind-reddened cheeks.

"No," he said determinedly. "_Never—_"

"Jim," a man with red hair and a portly stature said quietly, "I really don't think you can fix this one."

Jimmy let go of his best friend and stood, his fists clenched at his sides in anger. "Don't you _dare_, Carl," he said, his voice cracking with hurt, "I can fix anything; _anything!_" He was yelling as though to convince himself of the words, not his friends. He sobbed again, and looked down at the broken remains. "But there's so little to work with... if I start over from scratch..."

"He won't be_ him_ if you 'start over,' Jimmy," the blond woman said, her voice cold as ice. It was the first time she had spoken since the explosion. "Life doesn't work like that, so stop acting like a child and get over it." Her harsh words seemed to break the already broken young man even further, snapping his hold on reality. He stood in a daze, his eyes wide, his jaw slack. She had taken his already shattered heart and stomped on it with her words, though that had not been her intention.

Jimmy clenched his jaw, his lower lip quivering slightly. "Jimmy," she whispered, her heart aching for him, for his pain. She hadn't meant that. She didn't expect him to get over the death of someone so close to him. Not any time soon, anyway. "I..."

"Cindy, don't you _ever _use your head?" scolded Libby, protectively putting her arms around Jimmy's stomach in a hug. "How could you say that, girl?"

"I..." She couldn't even begin to know how to apologise. Whatever sympathies and penitence she had thought of saying died on her lips.

Jimmy shrugged Libby's arms off of him, and bent down low to the ground. He picked up what was left of his childhood cohort, now just scraps of metal and wiring.

"I really loved him, Cindy, more than I've ever loved anything." He turned his eyes away from the carnage in his arms to look at her. "But you wouldn't know anything about that, now, would you?" He let out a hallow half-laugh, the mirth never reaching his eyes. "I build him from scratch; every wire, every circuit, every gadget was all my doing. I gave him life. In a way, I lost my child today." He stroked Goddard's unlit head sadly.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy. I didn't—"

"Mean it? Yes you did. Just... leave me alone with my thoughts, please." He looked around at his three friends. "I need to plan a funeral."

He walked away from the wreckage slowly, his feet dragging across the pavement. "I can't believe he's really gone," Carl whispered. "He was always just there— I never, _ever_ thought that he could just... disappear."

"Sheen would have said something to cheer him up," Libby said, her eyes sad as she watched the genius carrying his dog away from the scene. "I can't believe he's not here for this— even in my wildest dreams, if I thought something like this could happen, it was always Sheen who..."

"Caused it?" Cindy suggested with a small smile of amusement.

"Well, yeah." Libby shook her head. "But he's not even here! This time it was Jimmy's fault—"

"No it wasn't," Carl protested, "It was _my_ fault! My fault and mine alone! Don't even _try_ to comfort me, because I _killed_ someone today!" His voice was shaking.

"It wasn't your fault, Carl," Libby comforted, touching his arm. He jerked back, away from her.

"It_ was_. I promised I'd watch his experiment while he went to take a phone call. I fell asleep and it... it..." He sobbed, covering his face with his hands. "It..._ destroyed_ Goddard! So much so that he couldn't put himself back together! I didn't even know that was _possible_!"

"Shh," Libby murmured, giving him a hug. "It's going to be okay, you'll see." She sighed, trying to convince herself of that. "You'll see."

--

"...He was my best friend for the longest time," Jimmy started, wringing his hands nervously in front of him. "He was there when no one else was, every time I needed someone to hug, or give me options. He always had what I needed at whatever moment I need it and I couldn't help love him like a brother... or a son. He was my rock in the real world when my dreams got away from me, and I... I just don't know how I'm going to live without him." A sob escaped him, and he bit back tears as he stood at the podium.

For any other dog, the funeral would have been small; a few family members, a friend or two. Almost the whole town was at Goddard's. He'd saved their butts too many times to forget; and even though Mrs. Vortex baulked at the idea of attending at first, she was seated near the back with her glassy-eyed husband along with everyone else.

The casket was simple; a metal framed wood box with his name carved into the top. Nothing too fancy. He wouldn't have liked that.

There was no comforting the boy who had lost his best friend even after the ceremony, because that boy was hidden away shortly after Goddard's death; locked behind the mask of an older man who wiser, yet stupid in comparison to that boy.

'_I am so sorry_'s and '_I know you must be hurting_'s and '_what will make you feel better?_'s bounced off of him like someone was throwing grains of sand, not words, at him. None of it registered with his brain enough to warrant more than an "I'm fine," for a reply. Cindy saw how broken he was behind his mask of maturity; and knew there was absolutely nothing she could do to ease that pain, even a little.

"I'm sorry," she offered her condolences anyway, and he shook her hand just as he had shaken many others' that day. She had to do something. She had to. Because that's who she was. "But not for you," she added. He looked at her warily, studying her face for a reason behind her blunt and bitten off harsh words. No one had said something like that to him that day. Everyone had put on a face of fake sincerity and wished him good tidings; not anything like Cindy was doing. And she knew that.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked politely, releasing her hand and dropping his own to his sides, standing tall and erect like a soldier.

"I said I was sorry... but not for you." She tried to keep her own mask over her face; keep her eyes cold and free of the pain she was really experiencing. "I'm sorry for him. For Goddard. But never for you... Nerdtron."

Anger tugged at his heartstrings and he balled his hands into fists. "I lost my best friend last week," he said, trying to keep his voice even, and just barely making his tone sound stern. "Don't forget that... Dorktex." They really hadn't changed all that much from when they were children. They were still hiding behind sad, overused insults and petty name-calling. They were still children behind the faces of adults that they now put out to the world.

"Your world is collapsing. I understand that." She did. "You're hurting more than you could ever have imagined you could hurt; he was like your child because _you_ built him, all by _yourself_. You loved him. I know that. I _understand_ that." She took shaky breaths. "But _you _aren't the one who's dead. You aren't the one who will never see again, never breathe again, never live again. _You_ still have life in you, Neutron, and I am not sorry for you because you refuse to except that there_ is_ life after death for the ones who survive it."

She turned as though to walk away from the now wide-eyed and trembling young man, but changed her mind, turning to him one more. He locked his jaw so as not to say something so nasty to her that he wouldn't forgive himself.

"Jimmy, I'm not going to pity you. I'm not going to give you fake reassurances that won't help one ounce, because I _know_ that they won't help. But, if you ever do need a shoulder to cry on..." She paused, reconsidering what she was doing, then thinking the better of that. "I will always... _always_ be here for you."

His eyes burned, and they locked on her ponytail as she turned around quickly and began to walk away from him. How dare she? How dare she say something like that to him, and then offer him her shoulder to cry on? How _dare_ she?

Jimmy looked to his left, putting his hand out for Goddard to lick playfully. He could still see him sitting there, tail wagging, eyes bright. He could still see his mind working in his little glass dome, still hear the buzz of his circuits and the clink of metal on metal as he moved his tail back and forth on the grass happily. He swore he felt his rough metal tongue graze his outstretched fingers as he stood frozen, willing himself not to forget a detail.

_Bark, bark._ He closed his eyes as tears threatened to fall again. How many times could you cry over the loss of one life? Thousands. Millions.

_I will always, _always_ be here for you,_ Cindy's voice broke his thoughts. Always? How could she promise that? How dare she promise something so fragile? One moment, one second, one experiment gone awry... it could have been Cindy. It could have been Carl. It could have been Sheen. It could have been Libby.

A lump formed in his throat. Always had no meaning anymore. For the first time in his eighteen years, Jimmy Neutron was finally confronted with the horridness of death. It could be fast, it could be slow; deliberate or accidental; known or a surprise. But it came for everyone. It had come for Goddard. It would come for him too, and Cindy and Carl and Sheen and Libby. It would come for his parents, for their parents, for his children and their children. So she could not promise 'always,' as 'always' could be over by tomorrow.

His sighed and looked to his side again, where he wished he could still see his faithful companion. He had thought that Goddard would be forever by his side. He had seen them in his dreams, old and withered both. He saw himself with grandchildren, running on the lawn, while he sat in a rocking chair on the porch with his wife— who she was varied from dream to dream— while he absentmindedly scratched behind Goddard's ears. Goddard was indestructible. He was supposed to outlive his creator.

"Forever by my side, my ass," Jimmy mumbled into the wind as it whipped away his words. "Forever doesn't exist. Always doesn't exist."

He felt a rough metal tongue graze his fingers, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was like cutting off a leg; you could still feel it, as though it was there. Phantom limbs. Phantom pets. Forever he would feel his; forever by his side.


End file.
